Obama's TV: sports, surprises

Call it a guilty pleasure, or maybe it just rings familiar to him. The HBO series about an aspiring actor features a fast-talking agent named Ari, based on the real-life brother of Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.

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For less R-rated fare, he tunes into “Hannah Montana” or “SpongeBob SquarePants” in the White House with his daughters. Aides said he would have watched Monday night’s NCAA championship on TiVo on his way home from Iraq Tuesday night.

Jon Stewart’s smackdown of CNBC’s Jim Cramer? Obama was eager to see it. But when it comes to the real news, and not the fake kind, Obama takes a pass — rarely ever tuning into 24-hour cable chatter or replays of his own performances.

“We usually tell him how we think he did,” said longtime friend Valerie Jarrett.

In some ways, it’s a TV diet that doesn’t seem so different than many American men’s, featuring a heavy dose of sports, including that staple of the channel-surfing set, ESPN’s “SportsCenter.”

But some of Obama’s choices definitely have an edgier bent — such as the HBO drama “The Wire.” His favorite character is Omar, a gay stickup artist who steals from drug pushers to give to the poor. (“That’s not an endorsement. He’s not my favorite person, but he’s a fascinating character,” Obama said last year.)

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“When you hear he likes ‘Entourage,’ you have to go, ‘That figures,’” said Robert Thompson, a professor of pop culture at Syracuse University. “Anything Obama does is cool by definition. He’s the Internet president, he’s the BlackBerry president, and now, I suppose, he could be called the HBO president.” Obama likes “Entourage” so much he even rearranged his campaign schedule not to miss an episode.

“We would talk about ‘Entourage’ all the time,” said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.

“A couple of times during the campaign, we would have these Sunday night calls at the same time as ‘Entourage,’” Gibbs recalled. “I remember one time I e-mailed him because the call was scheduled for the last 15 minutes of ‘Entourage’ and I said, ‘Just be late and we can just watch “Entourage” and still get on and do the call.’”

And of course, with Obama, there is basketball — NBA and NCAA games and lots of ESPN.

“Sports, sports and more sports,” Jarrett said of Obama. “On the campaign trail, as soon as we would get on the bus, the first thing he would do is turn the channel to sports channels.”

When he has a few moments, Obama is known to go searching for highlights of basketball games on “SportsCenter,” a show he has watched religiously for years. “I remember sitting in a hotel lobby with him when he was running for the Senate and watching ‘SportsCenter’ in silence,” said Michael Strautmanis, a senior White House aide.

But when you’re the president, you don’t just watch TV — you are TV. ESPN hosted Obama for a show called “Barack-etology,” in which he unveiled his March Madness college basketball picks.

And he’s got the ultimate man-cave — Air Force One. Strautmanis said he and Obama watched an NCAA basketball game on Air Force One last month as they traveled back from California on a late-night flight.

Seated in the office on the plane just hours after taping “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno,” Obama was focused on the game, analyzing the team’s every move.